In Dreams.......

I remember this time last year. We were decking the halls, laughing, smiling, singing, and most of all dreaming. Dreaming about having a new baby in our lives, dreaming about Viola's first reaction, how they would get along, dreaming about new adventures, playdates, library story times etc. When you are pregnant, you cant help but envision you and your babies future. I dreamt of this time of year and how old the new baby would be and how exciting our lives would become. But those dreams faded and had to be replaced with new ones. I was talking to a friend the other day of how many times this year I have had to reinvent those dreams, reinvent myself, reinvent Violas life. I can honestly say it is probably more than all the reinventing I have done in my entire life.

When I was in my 20s, it was definitely not a burden to do that, it was fun and freeing and wild and promising. Early on, I wanted to be a private detective after having read one too many Nancy Drew novels. Having always loved the early 19th century, I envisioned myself living in New York city, with my Nancy Drew outfit, walking into a classic movie theatre playing a Buster Keaton revival series and meeting my one true love.... yes I was a strange 11 year old kid I was. Then in my early 20s I wanted to be an Egyptologist/archeologist. I have always loved the past and I thought I would combine my love for private investigation with the past and try to solve mysteries of long ago. Then I fell in love with literature and decided to make my ardent passion of the 1920s and 30s into reality, and studied silent film and thought I would make my way into becoming a silent film preservationist. Then many many things happened along the way.

The funny thing is though that once I got married and became a mom, I stopped dreaming.....in that I mean, I didnt feel the need to reinvent myself anymore. I was in pure and unadulterated heaven.....in other words, I was finally living the dream life. I didnt want anything else after that. So when I became pregnant, I just kept thinking that my beautiful wonderful dream life would continue but with another beautiful child and I would continue all of the mommy things that I so loved doing with Viola, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, singing etc. I envisioned Viola and the new baby doing all of the things I had done with her, library, gymnastics, playdates, bathtime.....I just thought life would continue on the beautiful spectrum that we were on.

Then when things started to go downhill with the pregnancy, every other week I had to keep reinventing my life and my daughters life. Then when we thought Thurston was out of the woods in May, when I began blogging, I set up the nursery upstairs thinking that I could still have that same dream, but things just kept getting more and more complicated. So I accepted that and reinvented the dream once again, changing our lives around thinking well we wont be able to go too many places but I envisioned lots of arts and crafts and there was still bath time etc. since we would all have to stay indoors and hole ourselves up for the winter.

But that dream didnt last long either. Then realizing that Thurston just might need to either stay in the hospital indefinitely or get a trach I realized that my daughter had spent the better part of the last year living life outside of the dreams I had for her. I then had to reinvent her life again. I finally gave in and realized the only way she is going to have any stability is to go to preschool full time, no matter what happens to Thurston. This pains me so much because I so badly wanted to be with her as much as possible these early years, they grow up so fast and I just so desperately wanted her to stay home with me and with her brother. So the dream I first had when we moved here to be a full time mother and stay at home with my children died. But I couldnt just let her life squander away because of our situation, I had to give her an opportunity to make her own dreams too.

As far as my son goes, I have to do what is best for him. Chad and I have talked this over until we are blue in the face. We realize that he is wasting away in the hospital and that there is no way we can even start our lives until he gets home. And the only way to do that is to give him the operation that scares me to no end, that will make our lives extremely complicated, that could cause issues later on, but I think right now we just have no choice. It pains me to be away from him, it pains me for many other reasons I cant go into here, it pains me to know that we have not been a "family" for almost 10 months now, torn apart, never really together. I must reinvent my dreams once again. As this experience has been nothing short of a nightmare, I will try my hardest to rise from the proverbial ashes like the phoenix and hope that one day I can live the dream life once again.